Aoba Japan International School

A full IB Continuum school in Nerima running PYP, MYP, and DP for ages two to eighteen. Strong signal on inquiry-based teaching and on the global leadership framing the school markets heavily.

Aoba sits at the Hikarigaoka campus and serves around 790 students. It is CIS and NEASC accredited, and the May 2020 DP cohort recorded 100 percent passing with a top score of 37, a respectable but not headline result.

Parents describe long-tenured teachers who know their students, creative outdoor and inquiry-based primary classes, and a management team that families trust. Multi-year families speak warmly about international-mindedness as a lived experience rather than a tagline. The cohort is genuinely mixed culturally, which suits families who want their child surrounded by many nationalities rather than one dominant one. Families looking for a heavyweight British or American academic brand will read Aoba differently. Strength here is the IB throughline and the community.

• Tokyo expats place Aoba in the second tier of accredited Tokyo international schools, behind ASIJ, Yokohama International and Nishimachi but inside the group of properly accredited IB options. One parent said it "seemed to have stabilised after the ownership change" and is now fully IB-accredited.
• The Hikarigaoka location in Nerima is a real factor in the discussion. Parents and teachers note Tokyo is commutable and Aoba runs school buses, but the school is geographically less central than ASIJ or the Minato schools.
• Five Google parent reviews on International School Advisor are uniformly five-star and all around five years old. One parent said their younger child "loves the wide variety of learning experiences he has in kindergarten" and praised inquiry-based play, library time and outdoor learning. Another singled out a "100% IB Diploma pass rate" cohort with a top score of 37 in May 2020.
• The Japanese-language (Kokugo) programme gets specific positive mentions, with one parent saying it gives a better chance of children avoiding the semi-lingual trap that catches some international-school families in Tokyo.
• Around 30% of students per class in grades 1-9 are reported to receive English as an Additional Language support, which is high for a Tokyo IB school.
• The school describes itself as needing at least one parent able to communicate in English for school correspondence, which community discussions describe as a soft expectation for prospective families.